Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries

"Mencius lived about one century after Confucius but it was not until the Song dynasty, some 1000 years later, that Mencius’s interpretation of Confucius became the most influential one. Mencius believed that we are born good. He had a fairly optimistic view of human nature as well as the view that the government should rely upon informal means of social control rather than harsh punishment as a way of securing social order and harmony. Mencius is often viewed as the softest of the Confucians, as an idealist who wasn’t sensitive to realpolitik. But he was writing in the Warring States era, which was an age of constant conflict, and he had some principles for warfare–for when warfare is moral or just–which I think are quite well grounded in reality. To my mind they are quite realistic and feasible, and have much in common with modern ideas about just war. He provides an account of when defensive warfare is justified, namely when one is attacked in an unprovoked way by a neighbouring country. In this situation military force is legitimate if the ruler has the support of the people. He also has this idea– equivalent to the modern idea of humanitarian intervention–that when there is a ruler who is systematically oppressing the people, there might be a case for using military force to liberate the people. But he is quite clear that certain conditions have to be in place for this to be legitimate. One is that the people have to welcome the invading army, and that the welcome has to be long lasting, not just short-term. Also, there has to be the equivalent of international support for the invasion. He also investigates what we mean by oppression. And for him, oppression means that the ruler is violating the most basic needs; most notably that of survival. Mencius wouldn’t argue that you could legitimately invade another country in order to promote democracy. If a ruler is systematically killing the people, or systematically starving them, only then might there be a case for humanitarian intervention. The idea of sovereignty was emphasised throughout most of the 20th century in China , which made sense when China was being bullied by foreign powers and it needed to strengthen itself. Now China is a relatively powerful and stable country, with international influence. I think it will need to think a bit outside of the box, and that’s why some people are retrieving some of the ancient Confucian sources, including Mencius, which have worthwhile things to say about modern day humanitarian intervention."

"Mencius lived in the fourth century BCE, so he’s a rough contemporary of texts like the Zhuangzi . I say ‘rough’ because we don’t know the exact dates. Unlike Zhuangzi, Mencius saw himself as very much developing Confucius’s teachings. Indeed, in the fourth century BCE, he is seen as the great Confucian master of his day. This is a fascinating and profound text. Like the Analects, it consists mainly of dialogues, in this case dialogues that Mencius has with disciples, with rulers and with fellow philosophers that he’s disagreeing with. They tend to be much longer than in the Analects . You get the whole debate unfolding, so you really get to see the complexities of the arguments. It’s also an intriguing text because Mencius is portrayed in very ambivalent ways. He is clearly seen as brilliant, someone whose philosophy is extraordinarily powerful, and yet the text will—despite having been written by his own disciples—present him as sometimes failing. It’s part of the power of the text that it shows someone trying, on a daily basis, to live up to his own philosophy and, at times, failing to do so, and then learning from that. It’s a very complex portrait of a human being. Yes, there is one very poignant example. Towards the very end of his life, Mencius decides that the time is right for these ideas finally to be put in place at a wider political level. Thinking himself to be the great Confucian of his age, and certainly seen by others as such, he goes from court to court trying to gain an audience with rulers, to explain these ideas. He succeeds in gaining a significant ministerial position within one kingdom—the kingdom of Qi—and the king seems to be listening to him. Mencius clearly thinks that he’s about to become the great sage minister, leading to the emergence of a great new dynasty based upon the teaching of Confucius as interpreted by himself. He begins to be a little arrogant and a little too convinced of his own greatness. Then it becomes apparent to him that the ruler is simply using him—twisting his ideas to rationalise his own policies of self-aggrandisement. Mencius is forced to leave the state in total disgrace. There’s a very poignant moment where he’s leaving the state and one of his disciples says, ‘But Mencius, didn’t you once quote from your great master Confucius who said that you should never resent what heaven does—in other words you should never resent the things that happen to you in life, you should simply try to respond well to them—and Mencius don’t you seem a little bit resentful?’ The response is extraordinary. He says, ‘Well look, the time is obviously right for great things to happen. We need a great sage. Obviously I am the great sage, and yet, for some reason, heaven has prevented me from beginning a great new sage.’ Clearly, he is reeking of resentment. It’s a powerful moment where he visibly fails to live up to his own philosophy, overtaken by his arrogance. That is, in fact, how the book opens. The first two chapters of the book consist of these dialogues without commentary. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The rest of the book consists of Mencius simply trying to be a good teacher, arguing through these ideas with his disciples, training the next generation to be good. I think the layout of the book is saying that Mencius, at this key moment, failed and then learned from it. He realised that the way to change the world, in this case, would be, having failed politically, to be an extraordinary teacher and try to help the next generation be extraordinary beings. The layout of the book is a way of trying to give you a sense of a human being, in all of this complexity, trying to be great, failing, and then learning from that experience. It’s extraordinarily powerful for this reason. It would be much less powerful if it were simply Mencius spouting these brilliant ideas. It is more powerful to have Mencius saying brilliant things, but then, in practice, for the reader to see the complexities of him as a human being. Part of what I find so powerful about these texts is that underlying them all—for all their many differences—is a sense that the world is messy, that it’s complicated. We, as human beings, are very very messy and complicated, and the world around us is extremely difficult to understand—in fact, impossible to understand in the simplistic terms we attempt to do so. One must deal with this messiness. One must deal with this complexity, and, by definition, as one tries to do so, one usually fails. And then one hopefully tries to learn from it and create slightly better worlds the next time around."

"It’s a very common misconception that humanist ideas and humanism itself is purely a recent, modern, European phenomenon. In fact, the ideas that we talked about at the beginning–that morality is a natural thing, for example—can be found around the world and across time. You find them in ancient China, you find them in classical India, you find them in ancient Europe. Of course, there are large parts of the history of the world where we don’t have them—either because they’re not there, or because there is no surviving writing, or because the historical record has been censored. Christians and Muslims, in particular, went through long historical periods where they just loved to destroy books as their favourite pastime. A lot was destroyed. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . But almost everywhere that we have a record of ideas, humanist ideas have been present. I chose Mencius because he’s a good illustration of that. He was a follower of Confucius, 2300 years ago, but with some slightly different ideas than Confucius. “It’s a very common misconception that humanist ideas and humanism itself is purely a recent, modern, European phenomenon.” To stereotype, Confucius thought that people needed to be controlled and needed hierarchy and that they were not essentially good. Mencius did not believe that. Mencius thought that human beings were essentially good and, given the right social conditions, they would choose the good. He seems strikingly ‘modern’ and very much in tune with today’s humanist ethical thinking. He’s almost like a Chinese David Hume. They are separated by 16 centuries but their thought is strikingly similar. In speaking about the natural basis for human morality, Mencius gives the example of a child falling down a well. He says, ‘When a child falls down a well, what do people do? They don’t just run away, they run towards it.’ They almost can’t help themselves–it’s something they just do. And he observes this and builds part of his moral philosophy on it. He says this is the natural tendency of mankind. Exactly. Of course he says these tendencies have got to be developed. It doesn’t just come naturally forever that you always do the right thing. You’ve got to think about it, and you’ve got to build on it. But he says that when people are given the chance to do that, and when they’re encouraged to do that, they will be good. And I think that idea is one that is at the heart of humanism and contrasts so much with the Christian idea that people are basically bad and fallen and need to be controlled, constrained, and instructed. I chose Mencius just to remind us that this idea is older than a lot of the religious ideas that hold sway all over the world today. It’s not just modern. It’s a timeless idea that people have always come to when they’ve looked at the facts and thought for themselves about the nature of human beings. I think that’s one of the reasons why humanism always will be an approach to life that is part of our experience and our culture and society in the future, even if things turn out as badly as they could in E M Forster’s wildest nightmares. It will still be with us because it’s not only an optimistic and values-led approach to life, it has its basis in truth—the truth about our own nature."

"One of the books I recommend is the eponymous Mengzi. Mengzi lived in China during the 4th century BCE. Although he never met Confucius himself (who died in the early 5th century BCE), Mengzi defended and elaborated upon Confucius’ ideas. He’s most famous for his claim that ‘human nature is good’. What he means by that claim is that humans have innate but incipient tendencies toward virtuous behaviour, motivation and perception. These innate tendencies manifest from time to time, like in our spontaneous compassion for a suffering animal. However, Mengzi stresses that these tendencies are merely incipient: he compares them to sprouts of a plant in that just as a sprout of a plant needs to be cultivated in order to develop into the full grown plant, so do these sprouts of virtue need to be cultivated to develop into full grown virtues. Part of what is interesting about this is that many modern philosophers, including Hume, tend to talk as if our moral inclinations are fixed. Hume says in the Treatise , for example, that we have sympathy or compassion for others, but he doesn’t say how you would extend it or strengthen it. In contrast, Mengzi argues that we can actually become better people through various activities, and that a kind of ethical transformation is possible. That emphasis on ethical cultivation has, for the most part, been ignored in recent Western ethical discussions. I think there are some interesting similarities between the Confucians and the Aristotelians in that they are both, broadly speaking, giving versions of virtue ethics. But the differences are also very important and suggest some significant alternatives. For one thing, Aristotle says that we become virtuous through habituation: we become just by performing just acts, courageous by performing courageous acts, et cetera . Now, although I’m a fan of Aristotle, there’s a bit of a mystery about how habituation is supposed to create virtues in individuals who are, according to Aristotle, not by nature disposed toward virtue. Mengzi’s would answer, ‘Well, the reason you can cultivate virtue in people is they already have an active but incipient tendency toward it, which you can harness and develop.’ Without that, it would be impossible to cultivate virtue. In addition, Mengzi says to one of his philosophical interlocutors, who presents a position that is similar to Aristotle’s: ‘if our nature isn’t good, isn’t ethical cultivation a matter of destroying or warping our nature? Why should anyone want to have their nature warped?’ Mengzi believes that becoming virtuous isn’t a matter of warping our nature because our nature is actively disposed towards goodness; it just needs a healthy environment, like the sprout of a plant needs a healthy environment to reach its full capacity. So, that’s one respect in which Mengzi’s view is different from Aristotle’s, and I’d say Mengzi’s view is more plausible than Aristotle’s on this point. A second difference is that Mengzi has a distinct conception of the cardinal virtues. In the West, the most common view of the cardinal virtues goes back to Plato’s Republic : you have wisdom, justice, courage and moderation. Mengzi gives us a very intuitive alternative list of four cardinal virtues: benevolence, which is manifested in compassion for other human beings; righteousness, which is manifested in the sense of shame which motivates you to avoid doing actions which would involve compromising your integrity, especially in the face of temptation; wisdom, which is an executive virtue involved in achieving your goals and evaluating the character of others you interact with; and propriety, which is a matter of humility and also ease in social contexts. It’s a very plausible list. I find it easy to explain to students why these are the central virtues that encompass the other lesser virtues, whereas it requires some ingenuity to figure out where benevolence, which certainly seems like a virtue, fits into Plato’s list. So that’s another way in which we can learn from Mengzi things that aren’t present in the Western virtue ethics tradition. “Reflective Western philosophers often forget the importance in their own lives of their romantic and familial relationships” A third thing we can learn from Mengzi has to do with the ‘end’ or goal of human life. When I talk to colleagues who are Aristotelians, I often ask them, ‘What do you think is the highest good humans can achieve in life?’ Being good Aristotelians, they’ll say either: ‘Well, it’s theoretical contemplation as Aristotle suggests in book ten of the Nicomachean Ethics ’, or they’ll say, ‘it’s political activity for the good of the community, as Aristotle seems to suggest in book one of the Nicomachean Ethics ’. Next I’ll say, ‘What about your family? What about your spouse and your children?’ and they’ll usually look embarrassed and say, ‘Oh, well, yes, they’re important too, I suppose’. The fact that reflective Western philosophers often forget the importance in their own lives of their romantic and familial relationships illustrates that there’s not really a clear space in Aristotle’s view for the intrinsic value of these relationships. In contrast, Confucians like Mengzi will say that being a loving parent, or child, or sibling, or even just a friend is an intrinsically valuable relationship, and that these are essential components of living well. It’s good to consider the possibility that Mengzi is right that being in a family might in itself be an intrinsic good, as opposed to what seems to be the Aristotelian view, which is that the family is a tool for producing and maintaining philosophers like Aristotle; or the view in Plato’s Republic , which is that in the ideal state the philosopher kings and queens would keep all their spouses in common and all their children in common, and thereby eliminate the biological family unit. Yes, he thinks that it’s by loving others in the family that we first learn compassion or benevolence, and it’s by respecting others in the family that we first learn integrity or righteousness. So the family is the nursery for virtue as well. And then what you do is extend the compassion from members of your family to other people. Without that, he says, it’s not possible to genuinely show compassion. In a memorable aphorism, he says that you have to treat the young members of your own family as young ones should be treated, but then extend that to the young of other people’s families. Respect the elders of your family like elders should be respected, but then extend that to the elders of other people’s families. There is a tradition that he did, and there’s a fun story about that. Supposedly, he got married when he was young and he walked in on his wife when she was in an embarrassing or unattractive posture (out of delicacy, the text is a bit vague about exactly what she was doing). Mengzi ran out and announced he was going to divorce her. Mengzi’s mother overheard this and said: ‘I have heard that correct etiquette is that you knock before entering a room, so it is you who is at fault, not your wife,’ at which point Mengzi admitted that he was the one in the wrong. One thing I say only half-jokingly with my students is that very often philosophy in China will come up with something, and then Western philosophy catches up 2,000 or so years later. The ethical importance of the family is something that Confucians understood a long time ago, which Western philosophers are only now catching up with, in part due to feminist care ethics like those of Nel Noddings and Carol Gilligan and insights from developmental psychologists like Martin Hoffman. Absolutely! I also wanted to mention that Mengzi had a critique of a contemporary consequentialist school in his writing. Most people miss it, but the very opening passage in the Mengzi is almost certainly a critique of a kind of profit- or benefit-based version of consequentialism. Mengzi meets a ruler and the ruler says, ‘I suppose you come with advice about how to profit my state?’ and Mengzi replies, ‘Why must you even talk about profit? If you emphasise profit, your councillors will emphasise profit, and they will seek for the profit of their families, and if they do that then the people who are underneath them will seek their own individual profit, and soon everybody will be competing for profit and taking advantage of one another; whereas if you just emphasise benevolence and righteousness everybody will show compassion and will have of integrity.’ Mengzi thinks that the emphasis on profit, even if at the highest levels it’s an emphasis on profit for the group, is ultimately self-undermining because it makes people think in overly narrow terms. It’s interesting in that it seems to anticipate the view that in some way consequentialism is self-effacing or self-defeating, which again was a fairly late idea in the development of Western critiques of consequentialism. An interesting question is the extent to which Confucianism is or is not consistent with capitalism. Countries in east Asia with a Confucian heritage, including South Korea, Japan and China—which is now only nominally communist—have done remarkably well with capitalist systems, but traditionally Confucians have emphasised that only a petty person is concerned with profit; a genuinely virtuous person is concerned with righteousness and benevolence instead."